


What Mikkel does when he's in Denmark

by orphan_account



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Mikkel does not appreciate being the town's main source of entertainment, Town gossips, grumpy old women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:19:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A response to Helia's prompt for the multi-media fic exchange :  the gossipy neighbours in Bornholm have no idea what that Madsen boy is doing when he's away from home - but they don't lack fantasy</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Mikkel does when he's in Denmark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helia7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helia7/gifts).



> This is very late- I've been working on it on and off through some intense periods of study and examination and other deadlines besides, but hopefully it won't disappoint!

“Mikkel is here and he has that woman with him.”

The others look up from their stitching, their knives and whetstones, and their sleeping grandchild.

The woman who has just announced her dramatic news is out of breath, and has been out of the practice of running anywhere since she was a much, much younger woman. Balancing her hands on her hips, the woman manages through a few shallow wheezes “The one with the red hair. She’s at the Madsen farm again.”

This prompts a flurry of whispers. Neighbours turn to each other to exchange knowing looks or a short snippet of the theories which are about to presented and explained at great length.

The woman with the red hair started to follow Mikkel, the second eldest of the Madsen children (by now in his mid-thirties and well past being referred to as a ‘child’), back to the family farm about three years ago. Her identity is obvious; she is Sigrun Eide, the rising star in the Norwegian army with the penchant for killing trolls with her bare hands and strong words. Her purpose on the farm is less clear.  
Many of the townsfolk have speculated that she and Mikkel might be a couple. Why else would he bring home a woman? Mikkel is not the sort to allow just anyone into his life. He is a very private person as these things go and prefers to minimise his contact with the other members of his species, on account of a firm opinion which he spread all over town in his younger days, that everyone else in the world had rocks for brains and he was going to move to a Swedish mountaintop for a quiet life of hermitage as soon as he was old enough.

And now here he goes bringing back strange women to his family.

“Here they are now!”

The circle of townsfolk abandon their various projects and crowd around the open door, in time to see the red-headed soldier striding in step with Mikkel, who only needs to amble to keep pace with her. Together, they look quite natural. Like a pair of moose strolling off to get a drink at a nearby stream, or two of a school of fish, or a pair of oxen attached to the same cart; just enjoying the simple comfort of another of their kind’s presence.

“They’re an item. I’d bet my teeth on it.”

“You haven’t got any teeth, Old Brigit.”

Old Brigit’s rheumy eyes sweep the cluster of people around the door until she finds the offender, to whom she delivers a sharp cuff to the head for daring to sass her “I do so, Lars Traskesen. I have my two front teeth and I’ll bet them both that young Madsen and that woman are carrying on like a couple of teenagers.”

“I don’t know. They don’t look particularly romantic.” says another person, who also gets a cuff for disagreeing with Old Brigit.

“Of course not!” the old woman is infuriated by the younger generation’s inability to see what is so obviously right in front of them “Have you ever known young Madsen to give him affection freely? Even when he was a child he could hardly stand to be hugged! Now that he has himself a partner, you think he will be any different?”

A kid who has had to go on her knees to get a look through the forest of legs agrees “Yeah! ‘Cos Eide is like, really really powerful and strong and stuff, and she kills trolls with her teeth. I want to be her when I grow up.”

“You can’t be somebody else when you grow up.”

“Hush! Don’t step on the child’s dreams!”

“Speaking of stepping, whoever is on my foot, would you be so kind as to move, please?”

Old Brigit silences the cluster with a furious hiss “Hush, you fools! They’re coming this way!”

As it turns out there is little need to fall silent; as soon as the red-haired woman, the captain, drifts into line of sight, she can be heard as clearly and consistently as if she stood among the crowd. Her voice carries every word like a battle cry.

“…told me he didn’t think it was safe, and I was like ‘well Emil neither is hopping into a tiny tank with a bunch of people that drive you crazy for an extended period of time, but hey, what is it that we do every winter?’ and I swear, the look on his face. If he was the kind of jackass that hits people then he would have decked me, but he’s a sweet guy so instead he just kind of sighed and went ‘what are we going to do with you’.”

By the time the captain has finished her anecdote, the pair have drawn close enough to the house that Mikkel’s somewhat softer voice can be heard as well. 

“…word-for-word exchange of every single interaction you have with Emil. Still, I am touched that you remember the specifics of each little example of dialogue for me.”

“Sure, Mikey, we are some pretty damned interesting people.”

Lars chokes “Did she just call him Mikey?”

The woman next to him pats his back firmly, dislodging the giggle trapped there.  
“I’ve never known anyone to call him anything but his first name,” she agrees “Isn’t it strange?”

Old Brigit growls in the manner of a dog defending its bone “Mark my words. They’re lovers. Those two are getting married.”

“…tell me I’m not interesting just because all I talk about killing trolls a lot. That’s interesting.”

“Not when you repeat the same war stories about twenty times in the space of as many days.”

“Hey, I make new ones every winter! Is that not good enough for you?”

Several people gasp as they observe the captain’s elbow- her famous elbow, the one which has caved the faces of giants and broke down the strongest of doors in the Silent World- connects with Mikkel’s fleshy side. The child claps her hands over her eyes, sure Mikkel’s organs are about to come rocketing out of his mouth with the momentum of the blow.  
Others realise this was a friendly gesture and coo at the amicable little bubble around the two. They pass the house without noticing the clot of a crowd in the doorway

“I don’t know. They look more like friends than lovers to me.” says the same brave person that was previously cuffed for their trouble.  
This time, they have taken the precaution of stepping out of Old Brigit’s reach. Her arm flaps and searches in futile rage. 

“No one cares what you think, Malin! You’re only a child!” hisses Old Brigit.

Malin refrains from pointing out that she turned thirty last month “Besides, doesn’t Mikkel have a partner outside of Denmark? He has settled in Sweden. We can come up with as many conjectures as we like, but the fact of the matter is that we really have no idea what he does when he’s not in Denmark.”

Lars’ eyes are fixed on the retreating back of the captain “I have a pretty fair idea of what he does.”

His neighbours on either side smack him on the back of the head. Lars is still quite young- only eighteen, and a young eighteen at that- and is still learning his manners in the method which is typical in Bornholm. A good wallop upside the head every time he insults someone or suggests something insulting.  
Mikkel was taught to mind his manners in this way, and imparted the same sense of formality (stiffness, some might say) to each of his six younger siblings in the same way. The older members of Bornholm have fond memories of the expert angle of the light cuffs he’d deliver to his younger siblings when one got into a fight at school or disrespected their elders.

When the two disappear over the slope, the crowd unplugs itself from the doorway, returning slowly to their knitting, whetstones, and the grandchild which has just begun to stir from its nap.  
Old Brigit picks up her grandchild and starts to rock it back to sleep. 

Lars picks up his whetstone. He only stares at the dented surface, though, as his mind is elsewhere “Do you think he’s really a doctor in Sweden?”

“Who knows? Who cares, more importantly.” says a man called Anders, who has always resented Mikkel for being able to get his butt out of the backwoods of Denmark. Anders is fond of telling anyone and everyone that he could have done a much better job in that tank than old Madsen when he gets a few drinks in him, which is a frequent occurrence.

“I care,” protests the child, Shiro, who cares very much about everything that does not relate to her chores and homework “I want to know what he does! I want to be him when I grow up!”

“You can’t-” the naysayer is silenced with another of the infamous Bornholm smacks.

“There are a lot of rumours about Mikkel,” says Malin to Shiro, who happens to be her niece “Most of them involve him working for a secret agency.”

“But it isn’t secret if people know about it.” protests Shiro “I think he must be a really important person in the Council. He pretends he isn’t, but that’s just so he can work without getting bothered by people who wanna bother the Council.”

Old Brigit snorts. It is uncertain if this is meant to be a scoff or if she is dislodging some phlegm in her throat.

“I hear he works on the baby black market. Stealing immune babies from the poor and selling them off to rich families.” says one of the knitters.

Another knitter scoffs “Who told you that nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense! That stuff really happens! My cousin in Norway knows a guy whose girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend had her baby stolen like that.”

Shiro is not interested and quickly steers the conversation in another direction “What if he’s a mage? And ‘cos people think mages don’t exist in Denmark he had to run away to be himself.”

This time Old Brigit does snort. Loudly and long, waking up her grandchild with a jolt. She pops the child on her shoulder and comforts it with the ease of an expert.  
“Mages are just old wives’ tales.” she says. She assumes, anyway, since Old Brigit has never had the cause to leave Bornholm and therefore never the opportunity to see one of these alleged mages in action to judge for herself how much of it is nonsense.

“Says you.” says Malin, then to her niece in a whisper “Don’t listen to her Shiro. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Well I say Mikkel is up in Sweden working on a cure! That woman that had the breakthrough- Siv something- she said she never could have synthesised the Rash-blocker without his help.”

The Rash-blocker is the very first kind of preventative drug that has ever been created against the Rash. Well, preventative in the sense that the drug slows the Rash’s pace so that even the worst cases can last up to eight weeks more. In some cases people who take the Rash-blocker shortly before contracting the Rash have been able to amputate the infected area and survive without adverse effects.  
Truly a revolutionary discovery. One that few people in Bornholm believed Mikkel had participated in when the announcement came out.

One of the knitters says this and is shortly engaged in a furious argument with the other knitter, as to whether or not Mikkel is secretly a doctor working to eradicate the Rash, or just a medic who gives weird stitches.  
Soon the entire room is involved. Shiro pipes up again and again that she thinks Mikkel is a mage. Malin says she has no doubt that Mikkel is a normal guy with a few good friends. Lars says he thinks the red-headed captain is super cool and hopes she will marry Mikkel, and that they’ll move back to Bornholm so he can befriend her. Anders mutters under his breath that he would take better care of the captain. Old Brigit is in a frenzy to tell everyone how wrong they are, with painstaking explanations and a few personal insults. Even her grandchild burbles enthusiastically from her lap as if presenting their own argument.

It is into this din that Mikkel enters. He stands in a resigned silence for at least a minute. Then a knitter notices him and shuts up. Slowly, silence falls. Every face turns towards him, some eager, some embarrassed, many somewhere between the two.

“Having fun?” asks Mikkel “Guessing at my private business, I mean?”

“I hate you.” whispers Anders “I hate you so much.”

Shiro pipes up “Mikkel, what do you do in Sweden?”

Mikkel’s face is impassive “Well, Shiro, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

He pivots on his heel and walks back out. Behind him, he can hear the debate rising again.

He smiles to himself “That should keep them guessing.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, the Bornholm smack. Something appropriated from my own family. Don't think of great stunning wallops. Think of taps on the head with a newspaper and crushingly stern expressions.


End file.
